ABSTRACT
More important than the immediate practical effects of Thatcherism has been its effect upon how people think. The least contestable effect of Thatcherism has been the change in the opinion of its opponents. If one contemplates the Labour Party platforms of the forties, fifties, sixties, seventies and early eighties, and contrasts them with what the Labour Party, by the end of the Thatcher administrations, has come to consider desirable, one can see the true extent of the effect of Thatcherism upon British political thinking. A hostile view of Thatcherism as 'authoritarian' was encouraged simply by the degree of change that it introduced. The reason why Thatcherism seemed to be 'authoritarian' was that it suffered from a tension between its commitment to efficiency and its devotion to freedom. Hatred of Thatcherism for what was seen as its philistinism became directed at Mrs. Thatcher herself because of the tone she adopted.
